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THE 

RELIGIOUS 

OUTLOOK. 



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The War and the 
Woman Point of View 



RHODA E. McCULLOCH 



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THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 

The War and the 

Woman Point of View 



rhoda e. Mcculloch 

Editor-in-Chief The Womans Press 

National Board 

Young Women's Christian Association 



COMMITTEE ON THE WAR 
AND THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 

Issued by 
ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 347 Madison Ave. 

1920 






Other Pamphlets in The Religious Outlook Series 

1. The War and the Religious Outlook, by Dr. Robert E. Speer. 

2. Christian Principles Essential to a New World Order, by Pres. W. 

H. P. Faunce. 

3. The Church's Message to the Nation, by Dr. Harry Emerson Fos- 

dick. 

4. Christian Principles and Industrial Reconstruction, by Bishop 

Francis J. McConnell. 

5. The Church and Religious Education, by Pres. William Douglas 

Mackenzie. 

6. The New Home Mission of the Church, by Dr. William P. Shriver. 

7. Christian Aspects of Economic Reconstruction, by Herbert N. 

Shenton. 

8. The War and the Woman Point of View, by Rhoda E. McCulloch. 

Other numbers in the series are under consideration. 

Final Reports of The Committee on the War and 
the Religious Outlook 

1. Religion Among American Men: As Revealed by a Study of Con- 

ditions in the Army. (Now ready.) 

2. The Missionary Outlook in the Light of the War. About Feb- 

ruary 15th. 

3. The Church and Industrial Reconstruction. About March 15th. 

4. The Teaching Work of the Church in the Light of the Present 

Situation. About April 1st. 

5. The Effect of the War on the Local Church. About April 15th. 

6. Principles of Christian Unity in the Light of the War. About 

May 1st. 



Copyright 1920 by Rhoda E. McCulloch 



>G!.A561752 



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FOREWORD 

This booklet is one in a series appearing from time to time under the 
general heading, The Religious Outlook. These publications are being 
brought out under the auspices of the Committee on the War and the 
Religious Outlook in the hope that they may help to focus attention on 
some of the larger issues facing the Church after the war. 

The Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook was constituted, 
while the war was still in progress, by the joint action of the Federal 
Council of the Churches of Christ in America and the General War-Time 
Commission of the Churches "to consider the state of religion as revealed 
or affected by the war, with special reference to the duty and opportunity 
of the Churches, and to prepare its findings for submission to the Churches."' 
Full reports of the Committee will be submitted in the near future. In 
the meantime the present series of booklets , issued under the auspices of 
the Committee, is offered as a preliminary endeavor to emphasize certain 
phases of the task of the Church that particularly challenge its attention 
at the present hour. 

Communications designed for the Committee may be addressed to the 
Secretary, Rev. Samuel McCrea Cavert, 105 East ^d Street, New York. 



Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook 



Mrs. Fred S. Bennett 
Prof. William Adams Brown 
Miss Mabel Cratty 
Mr. George W. Coleman 
Pres. W. H. P. Faunce 
Prof. Harry Emerson Fosdick 
Rev. Charles W. Gilkey 
Mr. Frederick Harris 
Prof. W. E. Hocking 
Rev. Samuel G. Inman 
Prof. Charles M. Jacobs 
Pres. Henry Churchill King 
Bishop Walter R. Lambuth 
Bishop Francis J. McConnell 



Rev. Charles S. Macfarland 

Pres. William Douglas Mackenzie 

Dean Shailer Mathews 

Dr. John R. Mott 

Rev. Frank Mason North 

Dr. E. C. Richardson 

Very Rev. Howard C. Robbins 

Right Rev. Logan H. Roots 

Dr. Robert E. Speer 

Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes 

Rev. James I. Vance 

Prof. Henry B. Washburn 

President Mary E. Woolley 

Prof. Henry B.Wright 



THE WAR AND THE WOMAN 
POINT OF VIEW 

The Great War has revealed the fact that one 
of the least-considered and least-used of the 
world's stores of power lies latent in the minds 
of women. The morale of a country whose men 
were away at war was, in large part, the morale 
of the women of that country. If in the crises 
of the war statesmen turned from the battle line 
to weigh and estimate the force back of the line, 
their estimate was usually in terms of the hopes 
and fears, the resistance or the despair of the 
women. The thoughts of a woman in a French 
village street became either a national asset or 
a national liability. In facing the tasks of ad- 
justment that lie before us we may well consider 
whether the woman's point of view toward the 
world as it is and as it should be is not as impor- 
tant an asset in our national life now as in the 
days of the war. 

Whether or not it was because of the desper- 
ate pass to which war brought us matters little; 
it is undebatable that the past five years have 
brought about a new consideration of the con- 
tribution of women to the projects of society. 
Civilization had been built on the assumption 
that woman was physically inferior to man, yet 
with civilization falling about our ears it was 

5 



discovered that in many cases woman's powers 
of endurance could be stretched to compass 
tasks which had always been considered man's 
work. The life of the centuries had brought 
about unequal mental development for men and 
women, but as occasion demanded many women 
slipped easily and naturally into positions de- 
manding acumen, initiative and resourceful- 
ness. 

Governments had been built on the theory 
that not only their creation but their preserva- 
tion depended upon the contribution of thought 
and life which men could give; the chief argu- 
ment given by the opponents of woman suffrage 
had been that the vote could be given only as a 
reward to those who could defend the State in 
time of war. Yet within the past five years the 
women of England, France and the United 
States have been impressively told that the very 
existence of these nations depended not only 
upon the man strength of those nations but also 
upon the quality and extent of woman effort. 
Perhaps future historians will find that the 
greatest discovery of the years of the war was 
the discovery not only of the potentialities of 
woman's service but of the necessity of consid- 
ering woman's point of view equally with that 
of men in affairs of the Church, the nation, 
and the world. 

Great as has been the result of this growing 
discovery to society, its most spectacular result 
has been upon women themselves. They know 

6 



now that many ancient inhibitions upon them 
as members of society have no true foundation . 
No one believes that the needs of war-time have 
created out of a vacuum capacities and powers 
needed only for that particular emergency . The 
experience of these years has merely exposed 
social values which have always existed. Wo- 
men are conscious as never before not only that 
they can be something more than the wards of 
society, but that the world has actual need of 
their peculiar contribution to its thinking and 
achievement. There is an increasing feeling, 
expressed in many languages, that a woman will 
find her safest protection and render her largest 
service only when she has an equal share with 
men in matters social, economic and political. 

The Church and Woman's 
Enlarged Experience 

One result of the activities of the war years 
has been to produce a deeper belief on the part 
of women in group action. Men had learned 
this lesson through centuries of experience; for 
women the conviction grew in the night of a 
world crisis. Women whose only working ex- 
perience of the value of group action had been 
that of the local sewing circle have discovered 
that this same social force of group action can be 
released in other circles as wide and varied as 
the world itself. And, even more significant, 
whereas the work of the local sewing circle 

7 



was considered to be peculiarly woman's work, 
it has now been revealed that the world activ- 
ities of men are dependent for their effectiveness 
upon the mobilized effort of women, or of men 
and women combined for social action. The 
arms of men could fully prevail only as the 
organized effort of women conserved and made 
available the material resources of the world. 

The question now is, in what manner and 
through what agencies will women express their 
new belief in corporate action now that the war 
is over? Although in many instances it may 
have been the love of the spectacular, the desire 
to be in the game, that launched many move- 
ments of women, especially during the earlier 
days of the war, an honest estimate must reckon 
with much more significant reasons for women's 
war activities. Study the history of the organ- 
ized effort of any local community if you would 
find a basis for the use today of the power of 
woman effort which was revealed by the need of 
a world at war. 

1. In the first place, the war furnished an 
opportunity on a world scale for the fulfilment 
of the maternal instinct. One of the greatest 
posters of the war is a picture of the World- 
Mother holding in her arms the suffering of 
those of her children most directly hurt by the 
cruelties of warfare. The work of the Red 
Cross was a relief to women of varying degrees 
of resourcefulness, an opportunity never before 
offered to express one of the greatest, least-used 

8 



forces of society. It was democratic, for the 
card of admission was the desire to serve. It 
demanded the impossible, and women to whom 
the challenge of the impossible had never been 
given rose to their quotas of so many socks in so 
many weeks, and to their share of hours of ser- 
vice in the village work-room as though to prove 
to themselves, at least, that the same power 
which tradition and custom had confined to the 
care of their children could be stretched to in- 
clude the need of all the children of men. 

The Red Cross was but one of the organiza- 
tions in whose service many women learned for 
the first time that concerted effort on the part 
of all the women of a given community could 
give universal value and effectiveness to what 
they had one time thought merely the duty or 
privilege of an individual. Careful use of food 
materials, the mark of a good housewife, was 
given community- wide expression and thereby 
affected the welfare of men and women in far 
parts of the world. Thrift in the use of money 
was changed from a matter concerning only the 
future status of the family to that of a factor in 
the world's financial scheme. Even in the realm 
of life-conservation women found their responsi- 
bility and power swiftly widening out from con- 
cern for their own children to a concern for the 
moral integrity of other women's sons encamped 
all over the world, and of other women's 
daughters who were meeting the hazards of war- 
time in every nation of the earth. 

9 



The scene has shifted but little by the closing 
of the war period. The same power of the ma- 
ternal remains as a creative force in society, 
trained to new intensity, prepared for deeper 
sacrificial use, expectant and ready for wider 
territories in which to operate. Suffering and 
need are in the wake of war, deeper and more 
terrible than our imagination can picture, 
stretching on through generations of conse- 
quences which will tax to the utmost the creative 
sympathy of the followers of the Healer of 
Nazareth. 

Does the Church in its awakening reckon with 
this healing force, hidden deep in its life? It has 
in the past turned over to women much of its 
machinery for the relief of human need. But 
this activity on the part of women has usually 
been considered as merely auxiliary to the main 
business of the Church, whose policies and pro- 
grams have been created and administered for 
the most part by men . In the necessities which 
face the Church of tomorrow there may well 
be a freer play of woman spirit and initiative 
than there has been in the past if the contri- 
bution of the Church is to be complete. The 
unique elements which woman thought usually 
adds to the consideration of a situation of need, 
or of a program for meeting that need, would 
find their highest value if they were used by the 
Church in the preliminary stages of its plans 
rather than at the point of their execution. 

In estimating some of these unique elements 
10 



of woman thought, there is some question as to 
whether the present-day machinery of the 
Church will give scope for the exercise in world 
circles of that unused power, but lately awak- 
ened to new social significance, the power of the 
maternal instinct. 

2. Another fact which is revealed by a 
study of the response of the women of any com- 
munity to the appeal of war-time organization 
is that modern women have not had enough to 
do to occupy their whole time and strength and 
engage their complete interest and attention. 
While the minds of men have been busily in- 
venting ways and means of changing the work 
of a housewife from the drudgery of a century 
ago to the comparative ease with which it is 
possible today to conduct a household, those 
same minds have maintained with great insist- 
ence their ancient contention that woman's 
place is in the home and only in the home . They 
have not understood that it is impossible today 
to make a home within four walls. The doors 
and windows of a modern home are the open 
doors and windows of the community itself, and 
a woman cannot create the spirit of a home save 
as she shares in creating the spirit of the com- 
munity in which she lives. 

To those who have most closely studied the 
woman movement as it has developed in practi- 
cally every country on the globe, it has seemed 
as though the war offered at the psychological 
moment an explosive vent for an unused power 

11 



and resourcefulness which might otherwise have 
been expressed in other and possibly less socially 
helpful manifestations. 

A modern bakery advertised its wares in the 
letter of a mother to her soldier son: "Dear son, 

we are using bread now, so that I can 

have more time for war work." Business men 
have discovered that there is a new thing under 
the sun — the spare time of women from homes — 
and department stores are advertising the merits 
and advantages of half-time positions. Plain, 
everyday women have suddenly increased 
their output. After the experience of achieve- 
ment that a 100 per cent day has brought, many 
of them will be no longer satisfied with a day 
which registers only 40 per cent of effectiveness. 

Does the Church in its new program count on 
the fact that women have demonstrated that 
they have time and strength to give to any pro- 
gram which can use them to their maximum? 
The widening work of the Church will be pos- 
sible in the proportion in which it expects not 
dilettante effort, but the maximum output of 
women who have learned how to live on twenty- 
four hours a day. The old appeal to do certain 
small "stints" for the Church will only serve to 
lower its dignity in the eyes of a woman who, in 
less significant organizations, has been given an 
opportunity to use her best self and spend her 
highest effort. 

3. The swift response that the women of the 
country made to the appeals of war-time organi- 

12 



zations was a relief for an unused maternal in- 
stinct, now made socially effective; it was an 
opportunity to use time and strength for which 
modern life had given them no outlet. It 
seemed also to be more than this: it was a chance 
to sacrifice in a cause great enough to draw out 
deep allegiance. 

The Church has always taught the fundamen- 
tal of Christian living, the way of sacrifice, to two 
types of hearers. Men who have from im- 
memorial ages fulfilled the teaching and preach- 
ing function of the Church have spoken of 
sacrifice in terms of clashing spears and sounding 
drums, and the man in the pews has dreamed of 
masculine causes, political or economic, in which, 
by the grace of God, he might one day lose his 
political or economic life for a great principle. 
If women have figured in this dream it has usu- 
ally been in the role of one who makes possible 
a home out of which the warrior for social right- 
eousness steps for combat with the world, some- 
one in whom he can take just pride, "my wife." 

But the woman is not forgotten in the expo- 
sition of the way of sacrifice; a paragraph or two 
is concerned with the ancient sacrificial love of a 
mother for her child, and her inevitable con- 
clusion is that the sternest demand that Christ 
makes to his followers means for her not a 
struggle toward impossible heights of self- 
achievement, but merely the fulfilment of a 
fundamental necessity of her being. 

Great companies of women throughout the 
13 



world have found satisfaction in sacrifice for the 
cause of women, the demand for equal suffrage, 
and for equal economic and social opportunity — 
a cause which has seldom won even cursory 
notice from the Church. Little social value has 
been attached to the sacrificial spirit which 
women have put into the cause of justice for 
women industrial workers. 

In a girl's report of a meeting of striking 
workers there is the following significant para- 
graph: 

"A crowd was coining down-stairs and in that 
crowd one person caught my eye, a woman who 
had been in the service thirty -eight years. She 
was surrounded by a lot of kids who were 
laughing, but her face was serious and set. We 
had to win, not for the kids, but for women like 
this who had given everything. As she came 
close to me I said: 'I think it is wonderful for 
you to be here!' She said: 'No more wonder- 
ful than for the other girls. I am satisfied that 
my fate is in good hands.' A woman who 
could have been my mother satisfied to leave 
her fate in our hands! These are the things that 
made us fight." 

But this cause has, through the necessities of 
the case, been self -centered and to that extent 
limited. Its objective has been splendidly so- 
cial, in that it aimed for equality of opportunity 
for all women workers, but it necessarily con- 
cerned itself primarily with the welfare of the 
group most in need of social justice. With the 
demands of war-time many women for the first 

14 



time experienced the satisfaction of giving 
themselves completely to a cause which touched 
the home and heart of every citizen of the 
world. 

Can the Church interpret the cause for which 
it exists in terms which will capture the emo- 
tional idealism of women? In the main, they 
are not likely to be interested by the appeal of 
sacrifice for sacrifice's sake. Every woman's life 
has enough genuine self-denial in its days to 
discount the thrill of anything less than a big 
stake. 

Nor will women be widely interested in the 
cause of the Church for the Church's sake. They 
will be swift to see the fallacies of any program 
built to "save the Church." "We must capital- 
ize the fine products of the World War for the 
Church," said a leader in one of the large relig- 
ious denominations. "Why not capitalize them 
for the community?" was the query of his 
women auditors. But he entirely missed the 
point and went away sorrowful, deploring this 
seeming lack of devotion to the institution of 
the Church. Men find it more easy than do 
women to give their lives to the cause of an in- 
stitution such as the Church or the State. 
Women usually see the individuals behind the 
organization — and on its outskirts. 

A Deepening Instinct for Freedom 

The new self-consciousness of women has 
found expression not only in their growing belief 

IS 



ill group action, but in a deepening instinct for 
freedom. At this point, too, the community 
activities of war-time gave timely release to 
what students of the woman movement believed 
to be a most dangerously repressed attitude of 
mind on the part of women the world over. 
There have been many belittling misinterpre- 
tations of woman's growing desire for freedom, 
because at some points it seems to have as its 
motive merely a desire to be like men. The 
groups of young English girls who in the spring 
of 1919 used to stroll down the Strand at mid- 
night smoking cigarettes probably congratu- 
lated themselves on being able to do what their 
brothers were doing. Yet, at its best, this bit 
of bravado was a crude attempt to celebrate the 
dethronement of some of the inhibitions set up 
by society to keep woman in the place which 
tradition had dictated for her. 

One of the contributing causes for this change 
in woman's point of view toward social conven- 
tions is to be found in an historical study of the 
industrial order. The industrial system of the 
world before the war had been built on an as- 
sumption only recently debated as questionable , 
the assumption that the world's trade must be 
carried on with the help of cheap woman labor. 
One of the leading papers of Japan states that in 
May, 1919, forty-two spinning mills employed 
29,000 males and 96,000 females; 5,000 of the 
total, mostly girls, under fourteen years of 
age. The enforcement of the proposal of the 

16 



eight-hour day by the International Labor Con- 
vention would shorten the working day by forty 
percent. From the smallest process of industry 
to the most technical professions, the commonly 
accepted principle of payment has been the low- 
est possible wage for the woman and a market 
value wage for the man who did the same grade 
of work. 

With this as its practice, the world persist- 
ently professed in all of its expressions of public 
opinion its belief in the sacredness of woman- 
hood. Conventions were built around the ac- 
cepted standard of woman's conduct and main- 
tained by society long after the disappearance 
of the savage conditions that once warranted 
them. All of these safeguards for the protection 
of womanhood, with the increasing use of 
woman labor in cheap industrial processes, men 
gradually transferred from all women to "wo- 
men like my wife." Yet women in general, 
especially those who were nearest to the invis- 
ible line of economic dependence upon an indus- 
trial system in which women worked under such 
disadvantages, have been increasingly aware of 
the mockery of certain chivalrous arguments for 
circumscribing the rights of a woman to her own 
life, her liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

Then came the war and with it the generally 
accepted belief that women could be used widely 
and effectively, sometimes in places too crowded 
and busy for the entrance of certain artificial 
conventions to which many women had been 

17 



accustomed. In Woolwich arsenal, employing 
30,000 girls, one whole dormitory block was set 
apart for "lady workers," an incongruous sur- 
vival of the ancient idea that "women like my 
wife" must have especial protection from all 
that might make them "unladylike." 

The general acceptance of a place in society 
for women not hitherto granted to them, and 
the discovery on the part of women themselves 
of unused powers and resources, have seemed to 
strike the match to a long slumbering restless- 
ness, and women throughout the world have be- 
gun to proclaim in action their rebellion against 
limitations in whose reasonable basis they have 
long disbelieved. 

Yet their rebellion seems to leap the point at 
which it might have been aimed. Women do 
not want freedom to be like men; they want to 
be free to be themselves. In the report, pub- 
lished in January, 1919, of the Women's Trade 
Union League of England, there is an excellent 
summary of this post-war point of view of 
women workers: 

"There is a great stirring of activity, a spirit 
of enterprise, among the ex-munition workers 
which is of the happiest augury for the future; 
no question here of human material willing to 
submit blindly to the bufferings of Fate. We 
have to deal with self-determining personalities, 
alert for the shaping of their own future." 

It may even be said that men themselves rec- 
ognize the fact that the release of hitherto un- 

18 



used women power in the life of today will mean 
a new and unpredictable force let loose in so- 
ciety. Perhaps much of the opposition to pro- 
posed methods for releasing this new force arises 
from fear of the unknown. 

In a recent public utterance ex-Secretary of 
the Treasury, William G. McAdoo, speaks con- 
fidently and hopefully of the new woman 
electorate as "an independent body of voters 
which will be vital for the future of our country, 
inasmuch as they will forego party affiliations to 
cast their ballots on the issues of the day. 
Women bring fresh minds to the problems of the 
day and can vote according to the highest 
standards and conceptions of independent citi- 
zenship." 

Whether or not women will be independent 
voters, or whether it is desirable that they 
should be, is not the point. It is significant that 
men expect them to be different in their political 
manifestations . 

Within the space of five short years the ordi- 
nary everyday woman has been led into think- 
ing in realms which were at one time closed to 
her either by the mandates of society or by the 
choice of her own unawakened spirit. She has 
been thinking about war and its reasons for be- 
ing. The real significance of any intelligent 
protest, however unavailing it be, on the part 
of women against war as a method of settling 
international arguments lies not in the nature of 
the protest, but rather in the fact that women 

19 



consider it within their province to speak as 
women about matters which have always been 
conceded to be the business of men alone. To 
this question of war the woman mind brings its 
peculiar contributions. The woman sees the 
human values behind war's cold theories. At 
this point she is essentially personal. The food 
blockade could not for her be dismissed as 
necessary tactics in world warfare. Again she 
saw the people back of the strategy. 

The ordinary everyday woman has begun to 
think of politics as never before. Women 
whose thinking had been stirred for the first 
time by their sudden plunge into world con- 
sciousness began to see the relation between the 
political situation in their own ward and the 
necessity of sending their sons into the perils of 
a world war. Here, too, women bring a keen 
sense of personal values. If they are given fair 
initiation to the political world, they will bring 
a valuable contribution to its program and prac- 
tice. They will be likely to see it not as a game 
to be played for the sake of the game, but as a 
means for accomplishing certain social results. 
In a recent election of state officials a body of 
women, convinced that one of the candidates 
was an unprincipled opponent of the cause of 
justice for women workers, organized a cam- 
paign against his election. This they prefaced 
with a manifesto to the opposing candidate that 
their campaign must be construed in nowise as 
a moral support for him. They wished merely 

20 



to cast a decisive vote against the enemy of 
their cause. 

There are many uncertainties in the unpre- 
dictable days ahead for the Church, for the 
State, and for that new thing which the war has 
discovered for us, the common life of a complex 
world order. To men the adventure of life is an 
old story; to women the pages still unturned 
are full of the thrill of the unexpected and the 
unknown . What new values would be released 
for the decisions of tomorrow if the minds of 
women hitherto effective only within the home, 
could be brought to bear directly upon the prob- 
lems of the hour! 

This storehouse of power must be released not 
only because it may be a reservoir of possibil- 
ities for help in bringing in the new world order; 
it must be released because there is increasing 
danger in its being pressed back into its old 
prisonings. There will come a day of wide 
recognition of the social danger of chaotic, un- 
tutored, undirected thinking on the part of so 
great a fraction of the whole society as women 
represent. Even more, that meaningless sub- 
stitute for thinking, made up of apprehensions 
and prejudices, expression of intuitive likes and 
dislikes, which society has always expected from 
women, will be deplored as uncreative and anti- 
social. Out of the very inactivity of mind and 
purpose to which our modern society more or 
less condemns all women save those few who 
dare to thrust their hand up out of the depths — 

21 



out of this dead level of inaction there is born 
that spirit of prejudice and intolerance, that 
tendency to act on blind impulse, which is tra- 
ditionally accredited to women. 

The Church has given little scope for woman 
thought save in those parts of its program dis- 
tinctly labeled as woman's service. We have 
forgotten the dignified part which women played 
in the early days of the Church. Today she is 
an "auxiliary" to men, and in those informal 
assemblies for group thinking which are con- 
vened from time to time she is usually termed a 
"guest." 

What Women May Contribute Today 

What sort of world are we facing now that the 
war is over? It may be well to suggest some of 
the problems before us in which the woman 
point of view may helpfully factor. 

1. In the first place, it is a tired world. For 
five years the work of the world has been done 
at a velocity never before achieved. The lan- 
guage of the war posters was a revelation of the 
hysteria in which we lived and worked. "Speed 
up," "England expects," "Jusqu'au bout." The 
psychological result of this intensity of life must 
be estimated at more than its cost to physical 
welfare, for it was bent on the processes of de- 
struction. A newspaper correspondent, writing 
of a recent visit to northern France, says: 

"The revival from death is a slow convales- 

22 



cence. The mind of the people is siek. There 
is no return to normal life, and the blessed word 
'reconstruction,' spoken in Paris as a magic 
word, a word of power, is only a fetish and a 
will-o'-the-wisp." 

How can a world so depleted in nervous en- 
ergy awake now to the fact that life has gone 
out of many principles upon which the old 
world order was built — how can such a world 
rise to the adventure of building new things 
where the customary and the traditional no 
longer appear? 

It is a task for youth, but much of the world's 
youth has gone, by a strange irony, the objec- 
tive of all of the destructive forces to which the 
best creative effort of five years has been 
turned. 

There is a latent force in society, so young hi 
experience, with such unused strength, such un- 
tested powers of emotional idealism as to com- 
pare at many points with that strength of youth 
upon which states and nations have always de- 
pended for their growth. Women bring new 
minds, new daring, new hopefulness to a time 
in which the mind and spirit of world-builders 
is jaded and worn. There will be as much risk 
in experimenting with this new force as with any 
untried thing. The adventure of creative faith 
that will initiate the use of the power latent in 
the woman movement in projects of world- 
building will be comparable to the perennial act 
of faith in which in every realm of life old men 

23 



turn over to young men the accrued results of 
their life work. 

President Wilson has but recently thrown 
down a tremendous challenge to all thinking 
people: 

"We have either got to be provincials or states- 
men. We have either got to be ostriches or 
eagles. . . . Now by being an eagle, I mean 
leaving the mists lying close to the ground, 
getting up on strong wings into those spaces 
where you can see all the affairs of mankind, 
seeing how the world appears." 

It will take the daring of inexperienced states- 
men to make such flights as these . Can women 
out of their very newness to participation in 
affairs of moment bring that intensity of imagi- 
nation in which the true values of the problems 
of communities and nations will stand revealed? 
Can the Church afford to lose the opportunity of 
making the first experimental use of woman 
statesmanship? Perhaps women could demon- 
strate in their own home church, if given larger 
opportunity than they have had in the past, 
that they could bring to its problems not only 
vision and insight but that more practical power 
of following the moment of clear intuitive vision 
with a commensurate plan. 

2 . It is a world of twisted and shifting values , 
and therefore an unsafe world. There are new 
and puzzling uncertainties in the realm of moral 
values. Society had consistently ignored, even 

24 



in its most fundamental thinking, the fact that 
the universal problem of the relationship be- 
tween men and women had never been har- 
moniously settled . Now for the first time in the 
world's history there has been a wide breakdown 
of this comfortable assurance. What was one 
time considered a fact to be accepted, even 
though some might go so far as to find it a fact 
to be deplored, is now on an open road to new 
consideration as a problem which must find new 
adjustments and solutions. 

But where shall we find a moral standard 
against which this new solution to the prob- 
lem of sex can be measured? Confusion has 
come out of the very breakdown of the old pro- 
vincialism. The swift commingling of inter- 
national life during the war has demonstrated to 
men and women of plain thinking that there are 
varying standards of moral integrity and not 
one standard which the whole world acknowl- 
edges, whatever its practice. What were one 
time interesting facts in mission study textbooks 
or in the National Geographic Magazine have be- 
come a real but confusing experience to a great 
proportion of the human race who have been 
jostled out of their old provincialism into a 
world consciousness. From our own country 
perhaps 2,500,000 men went overseas; if they 
have had any faint sense of this bewilderment, 
not only they but their families at home 
will increasingly register it in our national 
life. 



25 



The inevitable consequence is the question — 
why any system of morals? This uncertainty 
has met for the moment an ebbing tide of relig- 
ious certitude, or rather, a change in the point 
of view from which ordinary men and women of 
limited experience have always judged religious 
values. The result can be nothing less than 
dangerous bewilderment. 

Who is to create this new moral standard for 
a waiting world? Women have in the past had 
most of their thinking done for them . Will they 
now think and speak and act for themselves in 
facing the trend toward a more or less current 
philosophy that strenuous morality is foolish 
and unnecessary? The winds of freedom have 
blown through the world, clearing away many 
ancient hindrances to the life abundant, but 
dangerously breaking down at many points re- 
sistances and convictions which safeguard so- 
ciety. There are those who excuse their free- 
dom from ordinary moral standards as a desire 
"to live fully"; but women know that this so- 
called "fullness of life" is a masculine point of 
view and can come only to given individuals and 
not to such groups as the family. Women also 
know that men and women do not start equally 
in the game of living life fully. 

It will be a difficult task to establish for a 
new world a convincing moral standard. The 
Church registers the current unwillingness to 
tackle it in its disproportionate emphasis upon 
the necessity of meeting a thousand minor moral 

26 



demands, while this central moral necessity 
often goes by more or less unchallenged. It is 
too often true that the accredited marks of the 
follower of Christ seem to be one's freedom from 
certain relatively small unmoralities, while the 
breaking of certain social conventions, founded 
not on moral grounds but on social customs, 
seems to have been elevated to the rank of 
deadly sin. 

Whether or not women are to bring new so- 
lutions to this ancient problem is not the first 
question . The Church is the natural and logical 
place for the manufacture of a new product — 
the thought and vision of men and women at 
this point. 

3. Old standards in the realm of material 
values are proving inadequate . Everyone seems 
to be more or less conscious that we are on our 
way to a new social order, and it is reasonably 
sure that the key word to that order of society 
will be the word "personality." But no person 
or group of persons has yet thought out the im- 
plications of that word "personality," so we 
keep on sounding the watchword of the old 
order, "property." 

One of the most baffling heritages of the war 
is a deepening material-mindedness on the part 
not of one group but of the whole of society. A 
recent discussion of current economic problems 
reveals the fact that not more than one out of 
every ten adult workers in the United States is 
employed in the manufacture of necessary 

27 



tilings. What social standard of valuation will 
in the future decide how much productive en- 
ergy is to go into non-essentials? 

In a recent book proposing a new basis for 
world economics, the author builds his argument 
on the theory that the power that most surely 
binds people together into social groups is their 
needs and not their money. A new grouping of 
society has just been discovered — the consumer. 
The consumer is no longer merely a field to be 
cultivated by the professional advertiser; he or 
she is a force to be wielded in the struggle to 
stabilize the economic world. 

Women are gradually becoming aware of their 
power as the spenders of the world. Although 
writers on economic subjects usually refer to the 
consumer as the X of an economic formula, they 
know in their sub-technical hearts, and fre- 
quently confess, that this powerful X is Mrs. 
Smith, housewife. If she as spender is deter- 
mining the needs of the world and so directing 
the forces of world production, her responsi- 
bility is as wide as the kingdom of world finance . 

At a recent conference of undergraduate col- 
lege women a discussion of the Christian solu- 
tion of the economic problems underlying the 
labor movement resolved itself into a discussion 
of the power of women as value-makers. It was 
freely recognized that the standard of material 
values demanded or desired by the women of a 
community sets the pace of that competition in 
industry and commerce which is one of the root 

28 



causes of social injustice and human exploita- 
tion . 

Women are thinking out an answer to the 
question: What are the real values of life? They 
are ready to help in determining what Jesus 
meant by his insistence that life was to be lived 
abundantly. Because they are women their 
answer is bound to be not in terms of material 
possessions, but rather in terms of personality 
and a fair chance for self-fulfilment for every 
member of the community. 

4. Perhaps because the world is tired, be- 
cause it is a world of twisted and shifting values, 
it is a world bewildered in its search for God. 
There are a hundred programs of reconstruction , 
but there is no approach to unanimity in answer- 
ing the question upon which the future hangs: 
What is life for? The experience of the war has 
given little light at this point. In one of Will 
Comfort's animal stories, there is this wise say- 
ing: "It dawned on him at last that when you 
go out with the idea of killing a creature, you 
may get its attitude toward death, but you 
won't know much about how it regards life." 

We have built a Christian ethic upon prohi- 
bitions; we have been more ready to say what 
life is not than to define what life really is. The 
modern woman, if she is awake, sees life new in 
contrast with the generations in which women 
have not been able to find full expression . It is 
to her now a depository of big experiences and 
she will be attracted by no philosophy which 

29 



does not comprehend the abundant life of which 
she hay had a glimpse. She is searching, often 
unconsciously, for a God who will bring human 
life to its farthest goal of self -fulfilment. For if 
the very unrest and bewilderment of the world 
of today is merely a fumbling attempt on the 
part of groups of various sorts to search out 
God, women will be peculiarly able to under- 
stand this world-wide instinct for a God who 
will set us free to become our best selves. Be- 
cause women have never found themselves as 
women they will more easily understand the 
fellowship outreach of great national and social 
groups which are struggling today for self- 
determination, whose labored steps, however 
many the mistakes, seem to be aspiring steps 
toward the God of us all. 

Much of the confusion in today's bewilder- 
ing search for God seems to come out of the fact 
that many thinking people who have accepted 
as the standard of their service the principles of 
Christ and who are committed to the principle 
of organization for effective service are not look- 
ing to the Church but are searching for a differ- 
ent medium for Christianizing the world . Wom- 
en in the labor movement are rarely even 
respectfully tolerant of any suggestion that the 
Church might factor in the struggle to bring in 
the new order of social justice. 

In part this attitude of mind can be explained 
by their ignorance of the new vigor of the 
Church in trying to meet the problems of indus- 

30 



trial readjustment. But there is another reason 
for this disregard of the Church in the crisis of 
today. Women who are on the firing-line of 
the cause of justice for women workers are there 
because they are single-minded in their search 
for solutions to the industrial problem. Neither 
in their own ranks nor in the individuals and 
organizations with which they reckon can they 
tolerate a divided mind, a faltering conviction. 
They know that the Church has said to one 
group in society: "The chief end of man is to 
glorify God and to enjoy Him forever," and to 
another group it has said: "Renounce your 
dream of life as a thing to be enjoyed; here is a 
way by which you can endure it." 

One of the leaders of this group of women 
thinkers has said: "The word 'goodness' to the 
working woman has come to mean the equiv- 
alent of 'resignation.' What we need is an 
interpretation of the word 'goodness' which will 
make it synonymous with initiative, courage, 
aspiration, and the right to look for fulfilment 
of life." 

Even now the world is beginning to be artic- 
ulate in its desire for good tidings of life which 
will give vigor and strength in place of fatigue, 
purposeful direction rather than a drifting aim- 
lessness. It is waiting for a voice which will 
say: "What therefore ye worship in ignorance, 
this I set forth unto you." 

The adventure before the Church is the ad- 
venture of living Christianity to the ultimate. 

31 



What quality of constructive faith, what inten- 
sity of intelligent purposef illness will women 
bring to the discovery of what Jesus meant by 
the abundant life? 

If there could be within the Church wider 
recognition of the fact that there is a world 
woman's movement, it might be possible to di- 
vert to the building of the new order the spirit- 
ual reserves of this fresh young force, the power 
of the women of the world. 



32 



